Migros - Sales Distinction of the Year

Company: Migros, Istanbul, TurkeyCompany Division/Group: Migros Turk T.A.S.Company Description: Macrocenter is a distinguished supermarket chain with its exclusive product portfolio, high standard of customer service, special store design. Macrocenter, that also provides tastes specific to Anatolia along with the post popular food from Europe and the world and caters to its customers’ lifestyles and preferences, works with a passion which surpasses expectations in all of its customer serviceNomination Category: Sales Awards Distinction CategoriesNomination Sub Category: Sales Distinction of the Year - All Other Industries

Nomination Title: Macro Store Managers Development Program

Tell the story about what this nominated organization achieved since the beginning of July 2015 (up to 650 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

This nomination is about a culture development/ training program, which has positive effects on distinction. With the help of this program, our company achieved a growth of 20,65% last year.

The Need:

Our luxury supermarket brand, MacroCenter sets its quality standards at the possible highest level. As competition rises, expectations of the upscale customers exceed even beyond this high standard. Store managers who are directly responsible from service quality were critical positions hitting this highly challenging target.

Another challenge was that store managers were providing services to an economic class of which they were not belong to. While these employees were from middle class families and districts carrying on a traditional sort of life with mid-level salaries; they were serving customers in a lifestyle that they had no idea about.

We already had a Store managers development program, which is a long-term, blended development program focused on management skills, retail knowledge and product and services training. However with these business needs on hand, we need to develop a new comprehensive, experiential development program which focuses on both luxury knowledge and experience.

The Program:

The distinction of this program is that, it does not only tell luxury world in the classroom, but also take the participants to real luxury experience, introduces a different culture, social class and lifestyle.

The program consists of two phases:
- Luxury Knowledge
- Luxury Experience

The first consists of in-class and learning from experience activities, experimental sessions and workshops; while the second is completely based on learning through experience.

In the first phase; participants learn about luxury world, products and competitors. With this first phase, it is aimed that store managers are equipped with the latest luxury knowledge, they are familiar with luxury world and they are specialized in our luxury products.

In the second phase, participants have an experience of luxury life and products. Aim of this phase is introducing store managers luxury life. We believe that, if they better understand life of luxury customers, they will have a better connection with customers, which is a real success factor in luxury retail market.

This phase is designed totally with experiential learning principles. Knowledge on first module is supported with this experience. Participants visited luxury shops, luxury cities, had tasting travels etc.

This program initiated a great achievement and it stands as a distinction in our country with its positive effects on business results.

Thanks to this program, participants experienced a different lifestyle; many of our participants flew on a plane, eat in a luxury hotel and shopped at a luxury store for the first time in their life.

After this program, employee loyalty increased by 31,5% in 2015. Turnover rate increased from 14,08% to 9,64% at the end of 2015.

Since the program is designed with an obvious business need, we measured business impact of the program, too. It was expected that, this program make positive effect on market growth. When results are analyzed, it was recorded that our Macro brand has grew 20,65% exceeding previous growth rate.

In order to clarify the effect of program, we focused on alcoholic drinks category which the program has most emphasis on; it has grown 26,65%.

When results are analyzed cumulatively, total income increased by 241% since the launch of the program.

This program is a real example of how a development program impacts business results in a positive way.